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I wouldn't completely abolish the DOE. Scale it down and put more strict policies on the teachers, as well as get rid of the tenures and unions. Especially throw 'No child left behind' out. If it is handled right, it could work.

I think that there is a sound argument to be made that there has to be some consistency to the public school systems. The public school systems aren't simply daycare, they are part of the machinery of the economy and labor. Unfortunately, of late that seems to have meant dragging down the good systems to the level of mediocre performance of the mean.

When my mom was a kid, the Washington DC public school system regarded rural public school systems as inferior and transfer students as likely to be ill prepared for their grade level. My, how things have changed. The real problem was that the DC public school system didn't have any way of knowing that the rural school system was up to snuff. I see a role for some sort of federal standards for local school systems; I'm just not sure that we need a huge bureaucracy to do it. Moreover, at the moment so many of the school systems are in the toilet, not because of the Dept of Education or because of "the labor unions" or any other attack on the personnel, they are in trouble because they have their hands tied by laws and courts which won't permit them to segregate students on aptitude and intelligence, they won't let them enforce good order and expel the disruptive or harmful students.

So the only viable option at this point is vouchers, so that parents who care can abandon the public schools and the public schools can officially become the repository for kids who ought to be in special needs facilities or criminal diversion programs.

While you were hanging yourself , on someone else's words
Dying to believe in what you heard
I was staring straight into the shining sun

As a Catholic school alumni and supporter, who needs a Department of Education when the private sector, private and parochial institutions, clearly do a better job.

Reduce everyone's property taxes or the amount that's paid to for public education and let families use that as tuition to send their kids to private schools.

I went to Catholic school too, a rural one. It was great. Our class size was huge and yet we had good order, and with rote learning no child is left behind. I have been told, however, that in some Catholic school systems, the schools are starting to have a taste of the problems of public schools with poor performance and violence.

While you were hanging yourself , on someone else's words
Dying to believe in what you heard
I was staring straight into the shining sun

Talk about abolishing stuff, how about we privatize air traffic control?
Then privatize Amtrak.
End subsidies for public broadcasting, like NPR.
Cancel the Small Business Administration.
Repeal the Davis-Bacon rules under which the government pays union-set wages to workers on federal construction projects.
Get rid of Agriculture subsidies.
Eliminate Housing and Urban Development.
And the Energy Department.
Privatize Social Security.
Cut the Commerce Department.

But eliminating the DOE would be a nice start too. Put States back in charge with vouchers.

I think that there is a sound argument to be made that there has to be some consistency to the public school systems. The public school systems aren't simply daycare, they are part of the machinery of the economy and labor. Unfortunately, of late that seems to have meant dragging down the good systems to the level of mediocre performance of the mean.

When my mom was a kid, the Washington DC public school system regarded rural public school systems as inferior and transfer students as likely to be ill prepared for their grade level. My, how things have changed. The real problem was that the DC public school system didn't have any way of knowing that the rural school system was up to snuff. I see a role for some sort of federal standards for local school systems; I'm just not sure that we need a huge bureaucracy to do it. Moreover, at the moment so many of the school systems are in the toilet, not because of the Dept of Education or because of "the labor unions" or any other attack on the personnel, they are in trouble because they have their hands tied by laws and courts which won't permit them to segregate students on aptitude and intelligence, they won't let them enforce good order and expel the disruptive or harmful students.

So the only viable option at this point is vouchers, so that parents who care can abandon the public schools and the public schools can officially become the repository for kids who ought to be in special needs facilities or criminal diversion programs.

The problem with a national standard and curriculum is that it demands compliance mechanisms that would be run out of Washington. This creates a number of opportunities for federal mischief. For example, it would centralize textbook content approval in the federal bureaucracy and eliminate dissenting view points. It would also empower large organizations that have lobbying capabilities, like unions, and remove power from parents and others at the local level. Finally, it would put the content of education in the hands of our governing class, instead of in the hands of parents and local educators who would be accountable to them.

20 Examples of How the World Would Look if Big Government Worked
Townhall
by John Hawkins

If you ran into people who insisted on trying to pound nails with a screwdriver no matter how many times they were shown a better way, wouldn't you think there was something wrong with them? What if those people not only used a screwdriver, but demanded that everyone else use a screwdriver instead of a hammer, too? Worse yet, what if those people did this for decades on end?

Well, guess what? We have people like that in this country. They're called liberals and the screwdriver they're using to try to fix America's problems is called big government. Despite the fact that we have decades of accumulated evidence proving that big government doesn't work, liberals just won't give up on it.

Now we may not be able to convince the hidebound Left that government doesn't work, but there are a lot of other Americans with open minds. Maybe some of them can be reached by pointing out how life would be if big government actually worked as well as liberals seem to believe it does.

•FedEx and UPS would be out of business because there'd be no way they could compete with the ruthless efficiency, amazing speed, & dazzling customer service of the post office.

• Social Security would be fully funded and every dime you contribute would be invested, ready to be withdrawn when the government needs to pay your benefits.

• The American people would be clamoring for the billing departments of private companies to match the professionalism, customer service, and competence of the IRS.

• A trip to the DMV would be no more of a hassle than stopping by Wal-Mart to pick up some laundry detergent.

• The Soviet Union would have won the Cold War.

• Members of Congress would actually read and understand the bills they sign into law instead of >>>

• Amtrak would be a cash cow instead of a 40 billion dollar money pit that has never recorded a profit.

• Government mandated price controls would work and therefore, we wouldn't have had gas lines during the seventies, California wouldn't have had blackouts, and rent control in New York would be producing some of the nation's cheapest housing.